FORT PIERCE — After more than six months of negotiations, the proposed land swap deal to redevelop Fisherman's Wharf will likely die.

City commissioners are meeting Tuesday evening as the city's Redevelopment Agency board to talk about the proposal for the first time publicly with the new mayor, Linda Hudson, but there may not be much to discuss.

City staff believes "an impasse in the negotiations" has been reached and the request for proposals to redevelop the city-owned wharf should be canceled, according to Urban Redevelopment Department Director Jon Ward.

"The assets being proffered as a 'land swap' do not represent adequate value to the majority of the policy makers," Ward wrote last week in a memo to commissioners.

Staff recommended a cash purchase of the wharf instead of a land swap as have others — including the owners of a private historic home in the middle of the property being offered in the land swap and the owner of a commercial fishing business redeveloping his property without involving public land or money — but the proposed developers said no.

"The developer(s) responded that (they) cannot support an all-cash offer, as (they feel) that the numbers do not work," Ward wrote.

The city put out a request for proposals last April as required to redevelop the city-owned wharf at the northwest base of the South Causeway Bridge after Chicago-based Mike Abinanti and Mike Heiser approached the city with a land swap idea for vacant property they own on South Indian River Drive.

The terms of the land swap proposal commissioners chose in July have changed several times. Abinanti and Heiser now are offering $350,000 in addition to their property at South Indian River Drive and Citrus Avenue, plus another $130,000 to represent about five years' worth of property taxes they would have paid on their property if the city takes over ownership.

They want to redevelop the wharf by constructing a 6,000-square-foot building to house a new restaurant, the existing Pelican Seafood retail fish market and the existing Inlet Fisheries commercial fishing business, but no developers agreement ever was drafted.

The city doesn't have a problem with the plans for the wharf but with what the developers want to offer in the trade, wrote Ward earlier in January to Abinanti and Heiser. The city also doesn't want to own anything other than parks and open access to the waterfront so it can collect property tax money from the private sector.

"The bottom line here is that you are offering to trade something to the city that the elected officials feel has no value," Ward wrote. "You are offering nothing for something and that has been the problem the entire time."